Truck and Barter

Dinar Discussion MAY 2008

Dinar Discussion MAY 2008

Dinar Discussion APRIL 2008

Dinar Discussion starting April 2008.

Dinar Discussion MARCH 2008

Dinar Discussion starting March 2008

Iraqi Dinar Discussion 1/28/2008 to ...

New page for comments as of January 2008

Iraqi Dinar Discussion: March 6, 2007 to August 20, 2007

As of August 20, 2007, this thread is closed,
click here to comment at the new thread.

The DinarAdmin moderator is still in place.

Here are all the posts in sequence:

1) June 16, 2004 - June 27, 2004
2) June 27, 2004 - November 6, 2004
3) November 6, 2004 - April 11, 2005
4) April 11, 2005 - June 22, 2005
5) June 22, 2005 - July 22, 2005
6) July 22, 2005 - April 30, 2006
7) April 30, 2006 - July 13, 2006
8) July 13, 2006 - September 8, 2006
9) September 8, 2006 - December 14, 2006
10) December 14, 2006 - January 7, 2007
11) January 7, 2007 - March 6, 2007
12) March 6, 2007 -

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Iraqi Dinar Discussion: January 2, 2007 - March 6, 2007

As of March 6, 2007, this post is closed to new comments. Click here for the new place to discuss the Iraqi Dinar.

Note that due to childishness of some commenters, a moderator -- codename DinarAdmin - will be making sure personal attacks are immediately deleted.

Comments are working, but all commenters must now enter a six digit code to have their comments posted. However, you may now post up to five links in one post -- instead of three.

Here are all the posts in sequence:

1) June 16, 2004 - June 27, 2004
2) June 27, 2004 - November 6, 2004
3) November 6, 2004 - April 11, 2005
4) April 11, 2005 - June 22, 2005
5) June 22, 2005 - July 22, 2005
6) July 22, 2005 - April 30, 2006
7) April 30, 2006 - July 13, 2006
8) July 13, 2006 - September 8, 2006
9) September 8, 2006 - December 14, 2006
10) December 14, 2006 - January 7, 2007
11) January 7, 2007 - March 6, 2007
12) March 6, 2007 -

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Reader email has been pivotal to the administration of this site. Thanks for your patronage.

Iraqi Dinar Discussion: December 14, 2006 - January 2, 2007

This post is now closed. A new thread starts here

.

Comments are working, but all commenters must now enter a six digit code to have their comments posted. However, you may now post up to five links in one post -- instead of three.

Here are all the posts in sequence:

1) June 16, 2004 - June 27, 2004
2) June 27, 2004 - November 6, 2004
3) November 6, 2004 - April 11, 2005
4) April 11, 2005 - June 22, 2005
5) June 22, 2005 - July 22, 2005
6) July 22, 2005 - April 30, 2006
7) April 30, 2006 - July 13, 2006
8) July 13, 2006 - September 8, 2006
9) September 8, 2006 - December 14, 2006
10) December 14, 2006 - January 7, 2007
11) January 7, 2007 -

If you guys & gals encounter any problems, email me at kevin-at-truckandbarter.com.
Reader email has been pivotal to the administration of this site. Thanks for your patronage.

Assorted and Interesting

Are The Big Four Econ Errors Biases?
A bird's eye view of econometrics
Is democracy good for the poor?
Numbers Guy on Armenian Genocide
The importance of a good analogy
Political Price Cycles in Gasoline Markets?
Wading in waste
Downshifting and Reversion in Forecasts

I Want It Now!The Curious Economics Of Temptation By Tim Harford
The Exceptionally Entrepreneurial Society
For Better or For Worse: Entrepreneurs, Families, and Inequality
Does America need a draft to win the war on terror?
Why understanding economics is hard
St Lucia best in Caribbean for Doing Business
God made Indonesia for free trade

Economics: The Invisible Hand of the Market
Dasgupta on the Stern Review
A Cool Calculus of Global Warming by Joseph E. Stiglitz
A call to arms- Anthony Giddens
Should Congress Raise the Federal Minimum Wage?—Posner
Iraq in Fragments (from the latest Foreign Exchange show)

Fed Chairman’s Daybook
A giant's strength is valuable - if not used like a giant by John Kay
Ivy League Investors by Robert Schiller
Globalization Makes an Easy Scapegoat by Robert Samuelson
Making fine distinctions in understanding hereditability of attitudes
What We Learn When We Learn Economics

Why Oh Why Can’t We Have Better Economists?
Can foreign aid work?
Uninsurable
Are Husbands really like potatoes?
Settling the New Continent by David Warsh
Syntax and flow

Getting it Wrong by David Friedman
Was Friedman a "Great Conservative Partisan"?
Milton Friedman: The Methodology of Positive Economics
Friedman On Growth Measurements and Immigration
The fading of Friedman by Paul Ormerod

European Cities Do Away with Traffic Signs
Secrets of the Cave Paintings
How I learnt to walk tall at 5ft 5in
The Paradox of Military Technology
Velvet Revolution in Iran?
Less Faith, More Reason by Steven Pinker
Mahfouz’s grave, Arab liberalism’s deathbed
Free Speech, Israel, and Jewish Illiberalism
The Myth of Thomas Szasz
Mirror, Mirror
Evidence that psychology, like biology, is conserved between human and nonhuman species augurs a shake-up for science and society
Conspicuous Proliferation
Just their type
Our appetite for literary gossip is insatiable, but great writers aren’t mere fly-by-night celebs, argues Bryan Appleyard
Bush, Maliki, and Lots of Questions
What is a Civil War?
Henry Kissinger says what he means, whatever that means

The budget of the insurgents revealed

NYT reports on the financing of the insurgency in Iraq;

“The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.

As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid for hundreds of kidnap victims, the report says. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments — previously identified by American officials as including France and Italy — paid $30 million in ransom last year…

The group’s estimate of the financing for the insurgency, even taking the higher figure of $200 million, underscores the David and Goliath nature of the war. American, Iraqi and other coalition forces are fighting an array of shadowy Sunni and Shiite groups that can draw on huge armories left over from Mr. Hussein’s days, and benefit from the willingness of many insurgents to fight with little or no pay. If the $200 million a year estimate is close to the mark, it amounts to less than what it costs the Pentagon, with an $8 billion monthly budget for Iraq, to sustain the American war effort here for a single day.

But other estimates suggest the sums involved could be far higher. The oil ministry in Baghdad, for example, estimated earlier this year that 10 percent to 30 percent of the $4 billion to $5 billion in fuel imported for public consumption in 2005 was smuggled back out of the country for resale. At that time, the finance minister estimated that close to half of all smuggling profits was going to insurgents. If true, that would be $200 million or more from fuel smuggling alone.”

Related;
In Search of the Fixers
Iraqi women increasingly targeted in violence
Ferocity of Iraq attacks leaves US troops helpless
Sunni leader must stop bloodshed, says Sadr
Iran: America Destroyed All Our Enemies in the Region

Podcasts

Altruism
The term altruism was coined by the 19th century sociologist Auguste Comte and is derived from the Latin “alteri” or "the others”. It describes an unselfish attention to the needs of others. Comte declared that man had a moral duty to “serve humanity, whose we are entirely.” The idea of altruism is central to the main religions: Jesus declared “you shall love your neighbour as yourself” and Mohammed said “none of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself”. Buddhism too advocates “seeking for others the happiness one desires for oneself.”…
If both mankind and the natural world are selfishly seeking to promote their own survival and advancement, how can we explain being kind to others, sometimes at our own expense? How have philosophical ideas about altruism responded to evolutionary theory? And paradoxically, is it possible that altruism can, in fact, be selfish? Contributors include Miranda Fricker, Senior Lecturer in the School of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and John Dupré, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Exeter University and director of Egenis, the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (from BBC’s In Our Time).

Niall Ferguson: The War of the World
The 20th century was a period of unprecedented economic growth and scientific discovery, but equally a century of unparalleled bloodshed and warfare - estimates suggest that 1 in every 22 deaths in the 20th century were the result of violence. Niall Ferguson argues that the intensity of the 'hundred years war' can be explained by the factors of ethnic disintegration, economic volatility, and empires in decline - forces which are to be found behind sites of contemporary conflict, notably the Middle East.

Can chocolate cure hypochondria?
Associate Professor in Latin Humanism Yasmin Haskell from the University of Western Australia talks about the history of hypochondria and benefits of chocolate.

Des Moore on Milton Friedman
“Why was Friedman so influential? It was not due to esoteric analyses of economic theory accepted in academia. He did very little of this and many academics resented his rebuttals of the merits of government intervention. His influence came importantly from his ability to explain and defend his beliefs in terms that were comprehensible and persuasive to the layman. His constant theme that adoption of free market policies were in the interests of the common man helped enormously.”

Carbon trading

Humour, learning and kids

Utility of Force- General Sir Rupert Smith (ret., British Army)

The Long War General John Philip Abizaid, Commander of U.S. CENTCOM

A Conversation with Akbar Ganji and Martha Nussbaum

Democracy Amercian and British style

Egyptian Book of the Dead

Does raising the miminum wage help the poor?

Private equity - the purest capitalism
Related blog- Going Private

A proposal to make Sunni Arabs happy

Two Princeton professors Shivaji Sondhi and Michael Cook, have a guest column at Econbrowser on a suggestion to improve the stake of the Sunnis in Iraq;

“The problem from the start has been the stake of the Sunni Arabs. This was entirely predictable, as no minority used to a disproportionate share of power gives up this privilege easily-- the relative deprivation simply excites too many fears. One only has to look at nearby Lebanon for an example…

To this end we propose that the United States make a financial commitment to Iraq which takes the form of ensuring that its Sunni provinces get oil revenues proportional to their share of the population over the next decade or possibly more. Initially, it should take the form of simply funneling an amount equal to the Sunni share directly to these provinces. This would at the same time increase the size of the national pie, which would help to appease the Shia and the Kurds, and might also reduce the tension over Kirkuk. In later years the commitment would transition into an insurance policy.

What would be a rough upper bound on such a commitment? To date Iraq has produced a maximum of 3.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil. This was back in 1979, and the country hasn't actually produced more than 3.5 million bpd since 1990. It is quite unlikely that either figure will be exceeded anytime soon. Taking the 1979 figure and a profit of $50 per barrel, we are talking about revenues of approximately $67 billion a year. Of this we may estimate the share of the Sunni majority provinces at about 20 per cent, or $14 billion. Today their share of the 2 million bpd production is closer to $7 billion."

Related;
Iraq's white-collar crime by Juan Cole
Iraq Force Shift Studied
Don't Punt on The Troops Issue by Fareed Zakaria
Iraq: over 3,700 civilians killed in October
Iraq snapshot
Violence in Iraq: A Data-Driven Approach
Iraq Kurdistan Book Drive

Iraq: Dujail Trial Fundamentally Flawed
“The proceedings in the Dujail trial were fundamentally unfair. The tribunal squandered an important opportunity to deliver credible justice to the people of Iraq. And its imposition of the death penalty after an unfair trial is indefensible”
(Human Rights Watch Report)

Milton Friedman on Iraq War

“Mr. Friedman here shifted focus. "What's really killed the Republican Party isn't spending, it's Iraq. As it happens, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression." Mrs. Friedman--listening to her husband with an ear cocked--was now muttering darkly.

Milton: "Huh? What?" Rose: "This was not aggression!" Milton (exasperatedly): "It was aggression. Of course it was!" Rose: "You count it as aggression if it's against the people, not against the monster who's ruling them. We don't agree. This is the first thing to come along in our lives, of the deep things, that we don't agree on. We have disagreed on little things, obviously--such as, I don't want to go out to dinner, he wants to go out--but big issues, this is the first one!" Milton: "But, having said that, once we went in to Iraq, it seems to me very important that we make a success of it." Rose: "And we will!"

-In an interview on WSG; The Romance of Economics Milton and Rose Friedman: Dinner with Keynes? Yes. War with Iraq? They disagree

Related;

The Great Friedman
Milton Friedman - Economist Who Showed The Way For Thatcher
Milton Friedman On Prohibition
Shalom Milton Friedman
Is Monetarism Dead?
Milton Friedman and the Pencil
All the obituaries of Milton Friedman relate this little anecdote
An Appreciation of Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman: How to Cure Health Care
Friedman deserves the thanks of everyone opposed to conscription
Milton Friedman Died. Did We Lose a Scientist?
Milton Friedman, A Modern Galileo
Friedman's theories leave a mixed legacy (something from England)
The Legacy of Milton Friedman
What Bush Could Learn From Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman on Hong Kong (1998)
Origin of the Methodology of Positive Economics?

On the Origins of "A Monetary History" (via Tyler Cowen)
"This paper explores some of the scholarship that influenced Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz's "A Monetary History". It shows that the ideas of several Chicago economists -- Henry Schultz, Henry Simons, Lloyd Mints, and Jacob Viner -- left clear marks. It argues, however, that the most important influence may have been Wesley Clair Mitchell and his classic book "Business Cycles" (1913). Mitchell, and the NBER, provided the methodology for "A Monetary History", in particular the emphasis on compiling long time series of monthly data and analyzing the effects of specific variables on the business cycle. A common methodology and the stability of monetary relationships produced similar conclusions about money. Friedman and Schwartz deemphasized Mitchell's "bank-centric" view of the monetary transmission process, but they reinforced Mitchell's conclusion that money had an independent, predictable, and important influence on the business cycle."

Carnival of Podcasts

The Peasants' Revolt
But who were the rebels and how close did they really come to upending the status quo? And just how exaggerated are claims that the Peasants’ Revolt laid the foundations of the long-standing English tradition of radical egalitarianism?

A bit more of British history podcasts via Brad DeLong. See also British History blog.

Saddam: Personal Insights

Heritage
In this four-part Heritage series Malcolm Billings explores the archaeology of patriotism in the USA; Part One, Part Two.

Air Taxi!
Recently the market for air taxis has really taken off but can this expensive form of personal transport really fly?

Crusading
What exactly were Crusades and how useful are they as a metaphor in the twenty first century?

Interview with John Emsley
If you are really keen to murder a spouse, which chemical element would you choose? Arsenic is SO last year. Mercury is so - well, mercurial. Cambridge chemist John Emsley offers informed advice for anyone contemplating homicide who would like to show a little flair and impress the team from CSI.

Flat Tax Reform in Slovakia: Lessons for the United States

The Liberal Roots of the American Empire
Michael Desch, Professor and Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-Making, George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University

Mandela portrait

Talking to terrorists
A discussion about an ongoing dialogue with several groups officially deemed terroist organisations. 'We don't talk to terrorists, full stop' - that is one end of the spectrum of approaches to dialogue. The other end might be: 'We'll talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, if we think its going to lead to a resolution'. Related - Conflicts Forum

More upheaval in the US newspaper industry

How is technology changing our world?
Today we take stock of these and other questions, have a look at what has and what hasn't changed with respected authors Joel Kotkin and Bill Eggers.

The mystery of Linear B, the script that pre-dated alphabetic writing in Greece. Listen to the podcast.

Interview with Mark Thompson
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with career entrepreneur and author Mark Thompson, who is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford Business School. Thompson talks about some 200 people he spoke to who have either built organizations or launched crusades – personal success built for a lifetime.

S.H.A.M.
The Self Help and Actualisation Movement is worth more than $8.5 billion U.S. in America alone. From Anthony Robbins getting his clients to run over hot coals to Marianne Williamson teaching that money is energy, and energy is infinite in the universe, it's getting hard to tell the difference between spruikers and sages. But according to investigative author, Steve Salerno, the happiness industry is banking on keeping us unhappy.

The Omidyar Network
In conversation with John Battelle, legendary technologist Pierre Omidyar explains the philosophy and business plan underlying his new network for investment in for-profit ventures which foster economic, social, and political self-empowerment. Applying lessons learned from his founding of eBay, this new investment strategy is based on the belief that people are basically good, and that connecting them with the right tools can build trust and opportunity.

Iraq reconstruction fact of the day

“Meanwhile, multiple audits conducted by U.S. and other agencies point to waste and malfeasance involving funds slated for reconstruction. The most recent, conducted by a UN oversight agency, found that the Halliburton subsidiary KBR had charged the Iraqi government $25,000 per truck per month for 1,800 fuel trucks that, it turns out, sat largely unused (PDF) along the Iraqi border…

All told, U.S. taxpayers have spent some $38 billion to rebuild Iraq—though much of the country’s infrastructure remains at prewar levels and many Iraqis still lack adequate water, electricity, and heating oil.”

- Tracking U.S. Dollars to Iraq

Related;

Private Profits in Iraq

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH IRAQ'S HEALTH MINISTER

Cronyism and Kickbacks

"Iraq Is Not Winnable"

Where has all the money gone?

The Least Accountable Regime in the Middle East

Doubling Down in Iraq -Warfare isn't like business.

Reporting Iraq

Iraq Study Group

The Baghdad Billions (podcasts)

Podcasts

“Some people will never learn anything because they understand everything too soon”
- Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope
So how did Pope manage to transform himself from a crippled outsider into a major cultural and moral authority? How did he shape our ideas about what a “modern author” is? Does his work still have resonances today or is it too firmly embedded in the politics, cultural life and rivalries of the period?

The Baghdad Billions- Part 1 (The first year of reconstruction) and Part 2 (Failure of the US aid programme)

Gun control - a new study has found the 1996 gun buy-back had no effect on firearm deaths.

Whistleblowers and the law

Do we have to die?

The Science Show versus God
This week Richard Dawkins' remarkable book The God Delusion is released in Australia. Dawkins, Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford says he hopes that reading his book will make believers doubt their faith. He explains why he is so convinced, through the weight of scientific evidence, that atheism is the more valid viewpoint. Two winners of the Templeton Prize, given for building bridges between spiritual values and science, Professors John Barrow from Cambridge and Paul Davies now in Arizona give alternative views

Stem Cell Research
The history of the science of stem cell research - what are stem cells and when and how were they discovered.

The curse of the Western world: a history of obesity

North Korea
On Rear Vision this week a look at the history of North Korea and in particular the history of the relationship between North Korea and the United States of America

Harry Messel
One of Australia's most famous physicists tells of a childhood in Canada where he excelled at school, did two degrees simultaneously at university, and came to live in Australia. His pioneering work here has to be heard to be believed.

High blood pressure medication
A recent Australian study looked at medication for high blood pressure and the implications of patients' adherence or non-adherence to their doctor's prescription of these types of drugs

Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall talks about her 40 years of work with chimpanzees in Tanzania, and the relationship between chimpanzee behaviour and human behaviour.

Home Fronts: Indonesia
Terry Lane examines the political influence of Islamist values, the impact of radical organisations on Indonesian society and the democratisation of Indonesian institutions, in the fifth program of this six part series

Tobacco and Culture: First Nation Peoples face the Challenge
Sucking on cigarettes. It's a public health nightmare for the world's indigenous peoples. Maori women have the word's highest rates of lung cancer. Smoking rates haven't dropped in 15 years amongst Aboriginal Australians. But, for Native Americans native tobacco still has sacred, ceremonial value.

Paracelsus
He became known as the Luther of Medicine for his reformist medical practices, but Paracelsus, who was born in Switzerland in 1493, was also a religious man. His belief that the body was actually empowered by God had implications for his theories of healing.

How many civilians have died in Iraq?

According to Iraqi government official;

"Iraqi Health Minister Ali al-Shemari estimated Thursday that 150,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the war as he spoke to reporters in Vienna. He later said he based the figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals--though such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000. However, the head of Baghdad's central morgue said his facility alone was receiving about 60 bodies a day as a result of violence."

Related;
Good News for Bush- from The Economist blog- also have a look at their spreadsheet
On Whose Authority
Can we accept Lancet’s result without accepting their number
The cost of Chaos
Drowning by Numbers
Estimating Iraq deaths using survey sampling

Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates
Tyler Cowen on the Lancet study
Daniel Drezner on the study

Further readings on the Iraqi excess deaths study
Dangerous Statistics: Estimating Civilian Losses in Afghanistan
Iraqi Death Toll Exceeds 600,000, Study Estimates

Home Fronts: Iraq (podcast)
Terry Lane talks to Patrick Cockburn and Zaki Chehab, two journalists who have recently published books about Iraq-Patrick Cockburn,Middle East correspondent for The Independent and Zaki Chehab, London Bureau Chief, Al Hayat-LBC TV

Iraq’s healthcare system rapidly deteriorating
Sex traffickers target women in war-torn Iraq
Paintings of Abu Ghraib shunned in US

*FERNANDO BOTERO painting on Abu Ghuraib above

Who Killed Iraq?

BBC reports on the missing billions from Iraq;

"In hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington, Democratic congressman Henry Waxman has emerged as the most vocal critic of the US' record on reconstruction.

In particular, Mr Waxman says proper accounting procedures were ignored when large sums of Iraqi cash were handed over by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) - the US-led body that ran Iraq immediately after the war - to get Iraqi ministries functioning again.

"I think we're looking at a huge scandal. The CPA handed over $8.8bn in cash to the Iraqi government even though that new government had no security or accounting system.

"No one can account for it. We don't know who got that money," Mr Waxman said.

Stuart Bowen is the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. His task is to follow the paper trail - and after more than 100 investigations his work paints a grim picture of waste and mismanagement.

Mr Bowen said billions of dollars were shrink-wrapped in plastic and flown out of the US to Baghdad.

"It was $2bn a flight, and I know of at least six flights," he said.

Mr Bowen said some of the cash went to pay the salaries of thousands of "ghost employees", or Iraqi civil servants who did not actually exist.

Related:

Why Gun-Barrel Democracy Doesn’t Work

Report from Iraq: Sorting Fact from Fiction in Iraq Reconstruction-Stuart W. Bowen, Jr, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (podcast)

Breaking Iraq apart

Iraq: Indications and Warnings of Civil Conflict

Via NYT.

Niall Ferguson on Radical Islam

“The great category error of our time is to equate radical Islamism with fascism. If you actually read what Osama bin Laden says, it's clearly Lenin plus the Koran. It's internationalist, revolutionary, and anticapitalist-rhetoric far more of the left than of the right. And radical Islamism is good at recruiting within our society, within western society generally. In western Europe, to an extent people underestimate here, the appeal of radical Islamism extends beyond Muslim communities.”

- Interview at Boston Globe

Related;

Radical Islam in Pakistan; For years there has been debate over Pakistan's role in international terrorism. What is the link between Islamic extremism and Pakistan and when and how did it emerge?

The American Muslim Dilemma

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Hurting U.S. Terror Fight;

“The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.

A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the "centrality" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document.”

How to Make Money – from War

The Guardian reports;

“Armor Group International, the security firm that makes most of its profits in Iraq, reported a drop in earnings for the first half of the year because of increased competition for business and the loss of a major training contract in Iraq.

The London-based company reported a 30% rise in sales to $134.4m in the six months to June 30. Armor generated more than half of its revenues from business in Iraq - $70.3m - although its non-Iraq business grew by 57%.

However, pre-tax profits slipped to $3.7m from $4.7m for the same period a year ago. Analysts had expected profits to be only 10% lower than last year's.

Armor is chaired by Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Conservative foreign and defence secretary. It is one of the UK's leading providers of private security for reconstruction workers in Iraq.

"The group has achieved strong revenue growth over the first half, and we are encouraged by the significant growth outside Iraq," said Dave Seaton, the chief excecutive officer.

The main hit to sales was from the loss of a $7.8m contract with the United States for training staff at the ministry of justice in Iraq, the company told Reuters. "It was a one-off programme funded by the US," Mr Seaton said. "The Iraqi government does not have the funding for its own training needs."

Armor is diversifying and has new or extended contracts providing security at the World Bank headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan; clearing land mines in southern Sudan, and doing security work for oil and gas companies.”

I wouldn't be worried so much as Failed States in the world seems to be increasing according to this World Bank report.

Related;

World Bank Lists Failing Nations That Can Breed Global Terrorism;

“The number of weak and poorly governed nations that can provide a breeding ground for global terrorism has grown sharply over the past three years, despite increased Western efforts to improve conditions in such states, according to a new World Bank report.

"Fragile" countries, whose deepening poverty puts them at risk from terrorism, armed conflict and epidemic disease, have jumped to 26 from 17 since the report was last issued in 2003. Five states graduated off the list, but 14 made new appearances, including Nigeria and seven other African countries, Kosovo, Cambodia, East Timor, and the West Bank and Gaza. Twelve states, including Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan, made both lists.”

Religion in America

“God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.”
- President Bush according Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

“Education on world religions for all our children, in public and private schools, and home schooling.”
-Daniel C. Dennett’s policy proposal (see TED speech below)

The Economist reviews a recent survey of religious attitudes in US;

“WHEN Homer Simpson opted out of church once, staying home to watch football and eat waffle-batter, he dreamed that God peeled off the roof of his house and appeared, furious, in the TV room. According to a new survey, 31% of Americans see God that way. He (always he) is wrathful and ever-watchful; He wants his followers to stop sinning, and thinks government should be promoting Him. In the South, 44% of people go in fear of His lightning bolts.

The survey, by Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion in Waco, Texas, via Gallup, found four broad views of God in America. Homer's Authoritarian God is the most popular. There then follow, in descending order of intrusiveness, Benevolent God (23%, rising to 29% in the Midwest), who still gives orders but will forgive, rather than smite; Critical God (16%, but 21% in the relativist East), who watches the world but does not intervene; and lastly Distant God (24%), a cosmic force without interest in human matters. This God is especially popular in the wide open West, with its huge views of the stars…”

Related;
Jesus Camp
ABC news report on the documentary
The Anti-Christ Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 (History Channel)
See also Rick Warren speech and Daniel Dennet’s response
Podcasts from Center of Inquiry

Ancient Prejudices?

Karen Armstrong weighs in on the Pope controversy;

“In the 12th century, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, initiated a dialogue with the Islamic world. "I approach you not with arms, but with words," he wrote to the Muslims whom he imagined reading his book, "not with force, but with reason, not with hatred, but with love." Yet his treatise was entitled Summary of the Whole Heresy of the Diabolical Sect of the Saracens and segued repeatedly into spluttering intransigence. Words failed Peter when he contemplated the "bestial cruelty" of Islam, which, he claimed, had established itself by the sword. Was Muhammad a true prophet? "I shall be worse than a donkey if I agree," he expostulated, "worse than cattle if I assent!"

Peter was writing at the time of the Crusades. Even when Christians were trying to be fair, their entrenched loathing of Islam made it impossible for them to approach it objectively. For Peter, Islam was so self-evidently evil that it did not seem to occur to him that the Muslims he approached with such "love" might be offended by his remarks. This medieval cast of mind is still alive and well.

Last week, Pope Benedict XVI quoted, without qualification and with apparent approval, the words of the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The Vatican seemed bemused by the Muslim outrage occasioned by the Pope's words, claiming that the Holy Father had simply intended "to cultivate an attitude of respect and dialogue toward the other religions and cultures, and obviously also towards Islam".

But the Pope's good intentions seem far from obvious. Hatred of Islam is so ubiquitous and so deeply rooted in western culture that it brings together people who are usually at daggers drawn. Neither the Danish cartoonists, who published the offensive caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad last February, nor the Christian fundamentalists who have called him a paedophile and a terrorist, would ordinarily make common cause with the Pope; yet on the subject of Islam they are in full agreement.

Our Islamophobia dates back to the time of the Crusades, and is entwined with our chronic anti-semitism. Some of the first Crusaders began their journey to the Holy Land by massacring the Jewish communities along the Rhine valley; the Crusaders ended their campaign in 1099 by slaughtering some 30,000 Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem. It is always difficult to forgive people we know we have wronged. Thenceforth Jews and Muslims became the shadow-self of Christendom, the mirror image of everything that we hoped we were not - or feared that we were…."

Related;
Pope apology fails to end anger
Al-Qaida in Iraq warns Pope
Political error or calculated move?
Pope: Manuel II's Views of Muhammad are not My Own

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Medieval Sourcebook

Doing Business in Iraq

A US website maintains an FAQ on doing business in Iraq (last updated 18 May 2005). Some questions and answers below;

“How can a small business pursue business opportunities in Iraq? Prime contractors of the first round of contracts issued under the $18.4 billion U.S. reconstruction funds are required by their contracts to allocate 10 percent and are encouraged through incentives to fulfill 23 percent of a contract to U.S. small, disadvantaged, or minority businesses. Small businesses interested in pursuing business opportunities in Iraq should demonstrate relevant experience, financial capability, capacity to proceed quickly and the aptitude to navigate a complex business environment, in addition to meeting specific contract criteria. The best way to ensure consideration as subcontractors or suppliers on reconstruction contracts is to directly contact the contractors, who are entirely responsible for choosing their own business partners. A listing of prime contractors’ representatives responsible for small business/subcontractor business development is available at http://www.export.gov/iraq/pdf/small_business_reps.pdf (PDF only). Businesses are encouraged to first consult the websites of these prime contractors because most require businesses to register on their websites. For Iraqi Ministries, private sector, and other business opportunities, businesses should monitor Iraqi newspapers www.onlinenewspapers.com/iraq.htm.

Are Iraqi banks participating in commercial transactions? On October 28, 2003, the Central Bank of Iraq authorized Iraq’s private banks to process international payments, remittances and foreign currency letters of credit. All Iraqi private banks participate in the daily currency auctions in U.S. Dollars and Iraqi Dinars conducted by the Central Bank of Iraq. A list of private and public Iraqi banks can be found on The Central Bank of Iraq’s website at: http://www.cbiraq.org/cbs4.htm. The National Bank of Kuwait, the Arab Banking Corporation, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank have been licensed to commence banking operations in Iraq. Export & Finance Bank of Jordan is acquiring a minority share of the National Bank of Iraq. All these banks will be capable of wiring money into Iraq in the near future. Wiring money to Iraq can be done with any international bank with a correspondent relationship with an Iraqi bank. One bank, the Credit Bank of Iraq has opened an account with National Bank of Kuwait in New York City. Thus, funds can be transferred to Iraq by wiring funds to the Credit Bank's account in New York City. The Credit Bank will receive confirmation of the deposit and can immediately credit an account in Baghdad. Using this method, a prime contractor can wire funds to the Credit Bank of Iraq’s New York City account, upon confirmation the deposit will be credited to its account in Baghdad. In turn, the prime contract can deposit these funds into an Iraqi subcontractor’s account at the Credit Bank of Iraq where the subcontractor can then draw down its funds as required. Iraq’s creditors preclude banks, Rafidain and Rasheed, from international transactions because their offshore assets are subject to attachment.”

Related;
The Unique Situation of the Iraqi Dinar
A backgrounder on the Iraqi dinar, including details on why the Iraqi dinar is positioned for a huge rise in value.

Doing Business Iraq- World Bank
Iraq Business Related Laws

Civil war or not, Iraq's economy faces vast challenge

Jordan expected to sign free trade agreement with Iraq

Iraq's economy is weaker than at any point since the US invasion in 2003

“Rumsfeld’s fake news flop in Iraq”

Some have dictatorship thrust upon them

Documentary slams corporate profits in Iraq war- ‘Iraq for Sale’

The Best War Ever

I Was A PR Intern in Iraq

Silliest thing I heard today

Organization of Islamic Conference is urging Muslim tycoons to buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-Muslim attitudes around the world;.

"Muslim investors must invest in the large media institutions of the world, which generally make considerable profits, so that they have the ability to affect their policies via their administrative boards," OIC chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told the gathering in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

"This would benefit in terms of correcting the image of Islam worldwide," he said, calling on Muslim countries to set up more channels in widely-spoken foreign languages.

Muslim stakes in Western media are minimal. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 5.46 percent of media conglomerate News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-run group behind the Fox News Channel. The U.S. channel is generally seen as right-wing and no friend of Arab or Muslim interests.”

If that is the best alternative that ministers from Islamic countries can come up with, than ….

Related;
The War with al-Qaeda
Opium Threats in Afghanistan, Iran
Pakistan’s Troubled Leader

Will Internet bring democracy to the Arabs?

Kuwait’s Annus Mirabilis, an interesting article on Kuwaiti political developments;

“Like the orange-clad protesters, candidates sent reams of text messages, using lists of cell phone numbers generated from records of attendees asked to sign in at events. Some messages, featuring rumor and gossip, were campaign tricks designed to make another candidate look bad. Most focused on thanking the recipient for his or her support and offered information about the candidate’s next event.

Blogs were a more important innovation. Voters could read some of the more sensational blog postings in daily newspapers. The Orange Movement leadership maintains a blog originating in the United States, managed jointly by overseas Kuwaiti students and one of the Orange organizers. This blog, KuwaitJunior, provided running news and commentary during the emiri transition in January 2006. During the campaign, it brought electoral corruption into the public eye thanks to a posting by a woman who recounted how two men in Rula Dashti’s district had attempted to buy her vote with the promise of a Chanel handbag. Although she did not mention the candidate’s name, it soon became public knowledge that she was speaking of Jamal al-‘Umar. The Orange leadership investigated this allegation by dispatching an undercover member, armed with a small video camera, to negotiate with the vote buyers. The camera failed, but the agent managed to capture pictures and voices on her cell phone. Then four young men who were not Orange organizers decided to challenge al-‘Umar during an event at his tent in Jabriyya southeast of Kuwait City. They asked him to explain why people were buying votes on his behalf if he was innocent of corruption as he claimed. The youths were roughed up and thrown out by the candidate’s assistants and, adding insult to injury, the Jabriyya police refused to accept their assault complaint. The worst part of the story came at the end, when al-‘Umar came in second, thereby winning a seat in the 2006 parliament….

All of which brings us back to democracy and Kuwait’s year full of miracles. As political scientist Eleanor Doumato has observed, women’s rights in the Arab Gulf states are the gift of monarchs, not parliaments. This is certainly the case in Kuwait, where opinion polls taken before the electoral law was changed in May 2005 showed a discouraging lack of support for female candidates, although more for female voters. The role of democracy in the 2006 election should be considered in broader terms than that, however. That there was an election at all was even more indicative of expectations that a democratic process should -- and did -- exist in Kuwait. The demonstrations that helped bring down the government were non-violent, as was virtually all of the official response to them. The new emir may have acted precipitously in canceling the parliamentary session and calling a new election -- and the speaker of the parliament later excoriated this decision publicly as unnecessarily confrontational. Yet only 20 years ago, a Kuwaiti emir dissolved a parliament and did not call for a new election until invasion, war and liberation made it impossible for him to continue resisting demands for the restoration of constitutional life.

These demands came from Kuwaitis, through a long and occasionally frightening period when street demonstrations were met with more than the possibly accidental injury of one person by a policeman’s baton. The pro-democracy movement of 1989-1990 saw more widespread beating of demonstrators, along with the desecration of a mosque by tear gas and police dogs, and the arrest of more than a dozen prominent dissidents. Demands for reform came from outside, too, not only from exiles abroad during the Iraqi occupation, but also from countries that, having sent troops to liberate Kuwait, expected its leaders to behave better than the ousted invader. Despite clerical and even popular criticism, after liberation foreign ambassadors and NGOs pressed for women’s rights, protection for stateless persons, better treatment of maids and other foreign workers, and structural changes to open Kuwait’s economy and political system. That each of these causes was also advocated by Kuwaitis does not diminish the usefulness of external support from those whose good opinion Kuwaiti leaders value. Such external advocacy is not only an additional check on backsliding toward a more authoritarian past, but is also evidence that other governments support democratization in the Middle East.

Jamie Meyerfeld, writing in support of the International Criminal Court, emphasizes the role of external checks to support democracy. “Like Ulysses tied to the mast…democracies steel themselves against future unwise temptations…. It is astonishing that [102] countries have voluntarily agreed to make their own leaders vulnerable to prosecution and punishment before an international court.” Similarly, international observers add to the checks exercised by national constituents of governments. These national watchers are more important, of course, but a little encouragement from outside can reinforce their efforts to build democratic institutions, and discourage governments impatient with the noisy demands of democratic politics from shutting those institutions down. If the international community were serious about democratization, no pillar of authoritarianism would fall without an attentive audience listening for the crash.”

Via Abu Aardvark

Related;
Young Kuwaitis turn ‘Orange’
Kuwaiti women one step away from their political rights
Kuwait and democracy in the Gulf;

“Kuwait is hardly a model of democracy either—at least, not yet. Its head of state is hereditary, and he appoints the 15-person cabinet. Typically, half its ministers are members of the ruling Al Sabah family. All have voting rights in the parliament. This raises the number of legislators from the 50 elected MPs to 65, and raises the bar for winning a vote against the government. Yet the parliament does have the right to embarrass ministers with tricky questions. It can rely on the Arab world's freest press to air grievances, too, though in this small, hyper-rich state with barely 1m citizens among its 2.3m residents, word of scandal gets around anyway. In January, it won greater legitimacy when it endorsed the removal of the ailing crown prince, only a few weeks after the death of the previous emir, and his replacement by an abler man.”

Can Iraq Make It?
Why America gives Israel its unconditional support
Moody's warns of risk for Gulf banks

Multimedia;
Illusion and Reality in the Middle East-A Discussion of American Strategy Regarding Iran, Syria, and the Greater Middle East (podcast from New America Foundation)
Is Dubai the new model for the Middle-East?
Obituary: Egyptian Nobel Laureate writer Naguib Mahfouz

Iraq Chaos

Juan Cole has a commentary in Salon on the divisions between the Shiite community in Iraq;

“Sadly, not even the man once considered the Shiites' great peacemaker has been able to stop the violence. The decline in influence of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, once a revered voice of calm and unity, underlines the fragmentation of the Shiite south. When his call to stop a Shiite-on-Shiite skirmish in mid-August went unheeded, Sistani was reportedly so discouraged that he was said to be contemplating a complete withdrawal from politics. Sistani had earlier been a key architect of Shiite unity, cobbling the various religious parties into the United Iraqi Alliance, which has more or less won both parliamentary elections. But his influence has waned as he has continued to preach social harmony and avoidance of reprisals against Sunnis, a message the Shiite masses no longer want to hear.

The military position of the United States and Britain in Iraq is already fragile. Coalition forces seem barely able to keep a lid on the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement in Ramadi, Samarra, Mosul and even Baghdad. The Pentagon admitted in its recent quarterly report that violence was up 15 percent in May through July over the previous quarter. July was the most violent month in terms of civilian fatalities since the fall of Saddam. Some 90 percent of the dead are simply found in the street - bullet in the brain, hands tied, signs of torture. For the most part such violence has been a dirty war conducted by Sunni and Shiite militias against one another. If Shiite-on-Shiite violence spreads, at a time when even Grand Ayatollah Sistani has been helpless to intervene, it is difficult to see how the American and British militaries can remain viable in Iraq.”

Related:

Iraq Country Analysis- Energy Information Administration

Cordesman: Civil War Can Break Out Anytime In Iraq

Iraq, Terrorism, and U.S. Politics

Fact Sheet: The President's National Strategy for Combating Terrorism

Saddam 'had no link to al-Qaeda' ; Senate's Intelligence Committee report

PortAl Iraq

The Official Website of the Multi-National Force in Iraq

After the Guns of August- Saad Eddin Ibrahim;

"President George W. Bush has been short on neither initiatives nor catchy slogans and acronyms. Recent years are littered with them: “Global War on Terror” (GWOT), “Road Map,” “Middle East Partnership Initiative “ (MEPI), “Broader Middle East and North Africa” (BMENA) – originally “Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI) – Democracy Assisted Dialogue (DAD), and so on. His latest reverie, envisioned in the thick of the recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, was the New Middle East (NME), with US clients Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia serving as the pillars of regional order."

Watchdog criticises US-run Radio Sawa, Alhurra TV; The Government Accountability Office (GAO) also found that Sawa and the Alhurra satellite television network were falling short in measuring the quality of their programmes, which the stations say reach nearly 36 million people.

Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq- Quarterly Reports

The Iraqi Conflict- miscellaneous links on Iragi history

Talking to Terrorists (podcast)
"This is a conversation with Rick Welch, a lawyer from McConnelsville, Ohio, who is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army reserve. For 18 months, from late 2003 until the middle of last year, Rick was the civil-military advisor to the commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, Taskforce Baghdad, and a major part of his job was to sit down with key figures in the insurgency"

Iraqi Dinar Discussion: September 8, 2006 - December 14, 2006...

Comments on this post are closed. Go HERE for comments as of December 14, 2006.

Comments are working, but all commenters must now enter a six digit code to have their comments posted. However, you may now post up to five links in one post -- instead of three.

Here are all the posts in sequence:

1) June 16, 2004 - June 27, 2004
2) June 27, 2004 - November 6, 2004
3) November 6, 2004 - April 11, 2005
4) April 11, 2005 - June 22, 2005
5) June 22, 2005 - July 22, 2005
6) July 22, 2005 - April 30, 2006
7) April 30, 2006 - July 13, 2006
8) July 13, 2006 - September 8, 2006
9) September 8, 2006 - December 14, 2006
10) December 14, 2006 -

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A New Map of the Middle East?

An article in Armed Forces Journal suggests we need to revise the map of the of the Middle East;

“A just alignment in the region would leave Iraq's three Sunni-majority provinces as a truncated state that might eventually choose to unify with a Syria that loses its littoral to a Mediterranean-oriented Greater Lebanon: Phoenecia reborn. The Shia south of old Iraq would form the basis of an Arab Shia State rimming much of the Persian Gulf. Jordan would retain its current territory, with some southward expansion at Saudi expense. For its part, the unnatural state of Saudi Arabia would suffer as great a dismantling as Pakistan.

A root cause of the broad stagnation in the Muslim world is the Saudi royal family's treatment of Mecca and Medina as their fiefdom. With Islam's holiest shrines under the police-state control of one of the world's most bigoted and oppressive regimes — a regime that commands vast, unearned oil wealth — the Saudis have been able to project their Wahhabi vision of a disciplinarian, intolerant faith far beyond their borders. The rise of the Saudis to wealth and, consequently, influence has been the worst thing to happen to the Muslim world as a whole since the time of the Prophet, and the worst thing to happen to Arabs since the Ottoman (if not the Mongol) conquest.

While non-Muslims could not effect a change in the control of Islam's holy cities, imagine how much healthier the Muslim world might become were Mecca and Medina ruled by a rotating council representative of the world's major Muslim schools and movements in an Islamic Sacred State — a sort of Muslim super-Vatican — where the future of a great faith might be debated rather than merely decreed. True justice — which we might not like — would also give Saudi Arabia's coastal oil fields to the Shia Arabs who populate that subregion, while a southeastern quadrant would go to Yemen. Confined to a rump Saudi Homelands Independent Territory around Riyadh, the House of Saud would be capable of far less mischief toward Islam and the world.

Iran, a state with madcap boundaries, would lose a great deal of territory to Unified Azerbaijan, Free Kurdistan, the Arab Shia State and Free Baluchistan, but would gain the provinces around Herat in today's Afghanistan — a region with a historical and linguistic affinity for Persia. Iran would, in effect, become an ethnic Persian state again, with the most difficult question being whether or not it should keep the port of Bandar Abbas or surrender it to the Arab Shia State.

What Afghanistan would lose to Persia in the west, it would gain in the east, as Pakistan's Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren (the point of this exercise is not to draw maps as we would like them but as local populations would prefer them). Pakistan, another unnatural state, would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining "natural" Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.”

Via Cartography blog.

*I do not share the views of the author

Podcasts Carnival

Dr Karl Sauvant - World Investment Prospects to 2010: Boom or Backlash? (Radio Economics). Here is special edition of the report

Jospeh Stiglitz: making globalisation work; Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has written a follow-up to his best-selling book "Globalisation and it Discontents" which looks at the current problems with globalisation and the forces of reform at work. Related posts by Tyler Cowen on Making Globalization Work, or Joe Stiglitz watch, part II and Joe Stiglitz watch

Sri Lanka; With violence once again erupting in Sri Lanka, Rear Vision traces the historical roots of the conflict. Guests include Jonathan Spencer, Professor of Anthropology of South Asia , University of Edinburgh, Dr. Jayadeva Uyangoda,Professor and Head, Department of Political Science and Public Policy, University of Colombo, Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, an independent, nonpartisan, public policy centre with a focus on peace and governance, Colombo

Books That Shook the World - Plato's Republic

Anthony Arnove; The Logic of Withdrawal

Christopher Scanlon on The Joint Strike Fighter

Australia and the nuclear renaissance; Nuclear is back. Australia, with its abundant ore and 'good guy' status could become a key member o